Guillaume Bresson : Peintures / Paintings

Exhibition at the Château de Versailles, 21 January - 25 May 2025

Trained at the Beaux-Arts in Paris, Guillaume Bresson (1982-) is now regarded as the leading figure in French figurative painting. Living in New York after Paris and Berlin, the painter from Toulouse is known for his resolutely contemporary scenes. Reinvesting a mode of representation derived from classical painting, abandoned until the beginning of the 21st century, he has revived contemporary history painting by applying this mode of reconstructing reality to his own era. Both a painter and a director, he anchors his work in the present, linking his creations to current social issues.

This catalogue of the exhibition held in the African rooms of the Château de Versailles offers a face-off between historical paintings, including those by Horace Vernet, and the works of Guillaume Bresson. Battlefields and urban guerrillas confront each other, inviting us to question the notion of staging violence in painting.